These 12 VA Colleges Among Best In America, According To Wall Street Journal

VIRGINIA — Twelve Virginia colleges and universities are named among the 500 "Best Colleges In The U.S." for 2025, in a newly-released ranking by The Wall Street Journal and College Pulse.

The study ranks these Commonwealth colleges, and the others on the list, by how well they set graduates up for financial success — and also takes students' overall satisfaction and personal recommendations into account.

“Our ranking measures how well each college sets graduates up for financial success,” according to the Journal. “We look at how much a school improves students’ chances of graduating and their future earnings, balancing these outcomes with feedback from students on college life. We don’t measure reputation, nor the college’s own finances.”

Here are the Virginia colleges, including their overall rank and their score out of 100:

• No. 19 Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, score of 83.9
• No. 33 University of Virginia, Main Campus, Charlottesville, score of 81.8
• No. 50 Washington and Lee University, Lexington, score of 80.3
• No. 70 James Madison University, Harrisonburg, score of 79
• No. 76 George Mason University, Fairfax, score of 78.3
• No. 115 Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, score of 75.2
• No. 121 University of Richmond, Richmond, score of 74.9
• No. 178 William & Mary, Williamsburg, score of 69.4
• No. 268 Christopher Newport University, Newport News, score of 61.2
• No. 321 Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, score of 56.5
• No. 374 Old Dominion University, Norfolk, score of 51
• No. 499 Liberty University, Lynchburg, score of 26.3

"The colleges in this ranking have found many ways to set their students up to succeed," study authors said.

Within the ranking, colleges are also listed based on student experience, best salaries for recent graduates, social mobility, and best value.

These are the top 10 colleges nationally, according to the WSJ list:

1. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
2. Babson College, Wellesley, MA
3. Stanford University, Stanford, CA
4. Yale University, New Haven, CT
5. Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
7. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
8. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
9. Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus, Atlanta, GA
10. Davidson College, Davidson, NC

Their study includes a number of well-known schools and some lesser-known campuses, ranking both public and private colleges, as well as technical schools and liberal arts institutions. Each school was given a score out of 100, with student outcomes making 70 percent of the score.

The learning environment on campus (20 percent) and the diversity of the student body (10 percent) are also included — with the study taking inclusion of students with lower family earnings and with disabilities into account for the diversity portion.

Read more from the Journal.